Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka, Alaska is closing its doors—at least for a year. Having commented on the demise of Antioch College (here), I think it appropriate to say a few words about Sheldon Jackson too. Both were founded as religious colleges in the 19th century: Antioch by Unitarians and the members of another liberal sect in 1852, and Sheldon Jackson by Presbyterian missionaries in 1878. Antioch began with high intellectual ambitions to become “The Harvard of the West”—the West being Yellowsprings, Ohio. Sheldon Jackson was intended to help the Tlingit tribe, which makes it more like the “Dartmouth of the North”—Dartmouth having been founded as “Moore’s Indian School” in Columbia, Connecticut in 1741, before the Rev. Dr. Eleazar moved it to Hanover, New Hampshire in 1770 and re-focused on Euro-American youth.

The Indians left behind in the Nutmeg State have recently recouped their losses by opening the Foxwoods (Pequot) and Mohegan Sun casinos. The Tlingit did not fare as well, being nowhere in the vicinity of the Yukon gold strike of 1896, when Skookum Jim Mason, a Tagish Indian, found gold in Rabbit Creek.

In any case, Sheldon Jackson College had a hard time of it, from its earliest days when it was known as the Sitka Industrial and Training School. It was—it is—the oldest college in Alaska, which ought to be worth something. And indeed it is worth at least $35 million in insured assets and has lots of undeveloped land besides. But it is also $6 million in debt and insolvent. Sheldon Jackson has let go its 100 faculty members and staff and is helping its 100 remaining students—25 percent of them Native American—transfer.

The trustees of Antioch say their college may reopen in 2012, and some Antioch alumni and (former) faculty members are furiously trying to reverse the decision to close it at all. The material problem facing Antioch is lack of students—ditto Sheldon Jackson. Antioch’s enrollment peaked at 2,470 in 1972-73 and would have been down to 307 this fall. Sheldon Jackson’s enrollment never reached as high as 307 at any point during in 130-year history. The New York Times reported in 1981, the College’s joy that after years of declining enrollment it gained ground and was up to 135 students and a graduating class of 37.

In view of its significant assets, including its location inside the Tongass National Forest—maybe Sheldon Jackson will return from its sabbatical, and do more than continue to run the College’s profitable fish hatchery and child-care center. But again, maybe not. Re-starting would mean hiring a whole new faculty.

So what happened to Sheldon Jackson? The answer was clear way back in 1980. The New York Times reported that “one reason” for the decline was “the growth of the University of Alaska and its programs for native students.” At that point, 45 percent of its students were Eskimo, and 20 percent Tlingit and Aleut. Today, with only a quarter of the students Eskimo, Tlingit, or Aleut, plainly Sheldon Jackson has lost its major market.

Is this a good or bad? The opening up of mainstream opportunities for Native Americans is, of course, excellent news, and in that sense perhaps Sheldon Jackson might have outlived its purpose. But there is something disquieting about the 1980 the new York Times phrasing referring to the University of Alaska’s program “for native students.” If Native American students have been enticed to forgo an education at a college that focused on accounting, business, fisheries management, and law enforcement to enroll instead in Native Studies programs at other universities, the closing of Sheldon Jackson might have to be reckoned as a loss. Nothing more betrays the educational aspiration of students than seducing them into the warm pleasures of identity-based “studies” programs.

Radical politics and multiculturalist lunacy drove old Antioch over the edge. By a strange coincidence, multiculturalism may have killed Sheldon Jackson too.